


Keep Breathing

by lady_wordsmith



Category: Atomic Blonde (2017), Castle Rock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Police Brutality, Prison, Reader-Insert, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-18
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-25 14:39:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16662759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_wordsmith/pseuds/lady_wordsmith
Summary: You've been friends with Gordan Merkel for years. Your friendship is genuine enough, in spite of its semi-rocky start. You even live with the guy. But it took six years before he trusted you enough to tell you he had a brother, and another three before you even met the brother in question.





	1. Gordan

You met Gordan Merkel what feels like a lifetime ago, when you were young, barely out of school, when you were first starting as an actress and barely getting “chorus” or “company” roles and had to supplement your meager income by “making friends” with patrons. That was how you had met, in fact- you on your knees in a dirty dress servicing a patron when Gordan walked in, calling the name of the man whose cock was in your mouth, and saying the car was ready. The man had pulled away; muttering something about “later,” and Gordan- who wasn’t much older than yourself at the time- chastised the man about “street waifs” and made a comment about how young you looked. The man grunted and told you to get up, “money’s on the table.” You had gotten up, grabbed the money, and made it as far as the hallway before Merkel had called you back.

You remembered pausing in the hallway, long enough that he closed the distance himself. He handed you more money, more than you had seen in a while.

“You weren’t here tonight.” He commanded you. “If anyone-and I mean _anyone_ \- asks, you were elsewhere. Your mother’s, a friend who will lie for you… Understood?”

You didn’t, not then, but you nodded anyway and accepted the money before taking your leave. A few days later, you spied a news headline stating the wealthy art patron from that night had been murdered. Perhaps a part of you thought about heading to the police, speaking about the tall man-more of a boy, really- who gave you money and told you to lie, but in the end, you lied to them all- the police, the head of your theatre company, and your fellows in the chorus, saying that while you left the theatre with the man, you had only had a short dinner with him before being summoned to the bedside of an elderly great aunt who never knew what year it was, much less what day you may or may not have visited. The man’s chauffeur had apparently confirmed your story about leaving during dinner, and that had been enough.

You saw the tall man, who you suspected to be the chauffeur, months later. He was attending a performance on his own, and you had bumped into him, almost literally, on your way out of the theatre to head home.

“My apologies, _mein herr_ … You!” you had cried out as you got a good look at the man’s face.

Gordan had frozen, clearly trying to decide if anyone had heard you, if anyone suspected anything, if he had to silence you either permanently or temporarily. Then you shocked him by hugging him.

“My friend! It’s been too long! Come on, come on, let’s get a meal and catch up.” you said, moving out of the hug and grabbing his arm to drag him along.

It’s only when you’re away from the theatre, mostly alone on a deserted East Berlin street that you turned to him with a look that surprised him. At best, you looked irritated.

“Stupid man, you couldn’t have picked another night to kill him? A night when he was alone? Do you have any idea the trouble you caused me with the police?” Your indignation had Merkel smiling slightly.

“Forgive me, _fräulein_. It could have been worse, you know.” He said.

You had scoffed and actually reached out to slap him, but he easily sidestepped the blow and you let your hand fall. “What, you could have sent them after me? You might as well have! Do you know how hard I’ve had to work to stay off their radar?”

He had looked at you with a look of curiosity, but you scoffed and pulled up the collar of your coat, turning to leave.

“The next time you plan to murder a patron,” you called to him as you walked away. “Come to the theatre and get a list of company actors from me that the police don’t have a hard-on for.”

You never expected him to take you seriously, nor had you expected for him to pull you in, bit by bit, into his world. But damned if that hadn’t happened, first with the list of your fellow actors (which you justified by mostly picking from your competition for parts), and more and more until you and Merkel were basically working together, though you remained at the edge of his network, never officially a spy and only those really truly “in the know” even knew of your existence. You only interacted with Gordan, almost never speaking to other spies (and even then, he was always there directing the interaction). Once, you overheard Gordan talking with someone, a woman with white blonde hair, who remarked that you were a decent actress and would probably make a relatively decent spy, but you saw him shake his head.

“ _Nein_. She’s better at comedy than drama.” He told the woman, and you supposed it would have hurt if it wasn’t almost essentially true.

You were pretty sure other spies thought you were fucking him; people in your public lives certainly did, and it hadn’t helped matters when you moved in with Gordan. Never mind you had your own bedroom or that both of you frequently brought people home (Gordan more often than you; sometimes he brought _many_ people home at once, and you would make yourself scarce while joking that Merkel was the dictionary definition of German depravity), you knew what people would think and simply ignored it.

Regardless, you and Merkel had a strong friendship that grew stronger over the years. It was still some time, however, before the two of you shared what could be considered your darkest secrets.

It had been in the winter of the first year you lived together, about six years after you first met. The wall wouldn’t fall for another four years. The theatre you worked for had been shut down for lack of funding, and while you sought work elsewhere you had resorted to working at the bar with Gordan. Money was tight, and the two of you arrived home after a long night at the bar to discover your power had been shut off. You had cursed a blue streak while he had merely sighed and went hunting for candles. Frustrated, you went searching for your secret stash of alcohol and emerged with a large bottle of fortified wine, which you shared with Gordan after he offered you cigarettes in trade. The two of you huddled together under a blanket for warmth, you began talking, and eventually the conversation turned to family.

You hated talking about family most of the time. Gordan knew about your more distant relations but you rarely spoke of your parents, and Gordan had surely noticed how they never featured in stories of your childhood, that in fact you mentioned you mentioned a drove of aunts and uncles and cousins but never the two responsible for giving you life, and it was clear he was curious as to why.

“I haven’t seen them in years.” You admitted, almost too blithely. “They left when I was six, never came back. My aunt Mathilde said they planned to leave for the west and simply just left one day.”

“Your parents defected? And yet…” Gordan trailed off, but the question had been in his eyes. “So that’s why you worried so much about the police when we first met.”

“I said they tried, Gordan. I can only assume they either didn’t succeed, or they did and defection was, at best, a pretext.” You told him, sipping your wine. “Either way, being the child of defectors doesn’t win me any favors with authority figures.”

“There are easier ways to abandon a child, _frechdachs_.“  But Gordan shook his head and didn’t push at the situation. "I, too, have lost family. Not to defection, but...“

He had shook his head, but even in the dim light of candles, you could see the tears in his eyes. You reached out to him, but he waved you away.

"Gordan?“ you said, raising your eyebrows at him.

"I had... Have a brother,“ he whispered hoarsely. "A twin. He went to prison because of me. He may well be dead, I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since he was arrested. They’ve never even given me an address to write letters to. And I’ve tried to find him. I’ve been trying for years.“

You had no idea what to say to that. You suppose it didn’t matter anyway, but Gordan kept talking, seemingly unable to stop once the floodgate had been opened.

“He was going to be a doctor, he wanted to help people, and I ruined that, ruined him. It was stupid and foolish… I made so many mistakes. And he just… took the fall for me, never even hesitated. He had never been political, _frechdachs_ , not like me, not even like you.” At that, Gordan pauses and smiles at you. “That’s why I won’t let you get involved, _frechdachs_. With others, it’s different; they know what they’re getting into. But you…” he laughs, almost to himself. “The two of you couldn’t be more different in personality, but I see something of him in you. That essential kindness and sweetness, and I won’t let it be destroyed. I let it happen once, not again.”

Gordan runs his hands through his hair with a sigh, and turns to you, his eyes tired and weary.

“His name’s Henry.” He tells you.


	2. Henry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes he forgets he had a brother at all.

Sometimes, in those long stretches of time in solitary, he forgets he had a brother at all. It’s easy enough; there’s almost no news of the outside world and no way of knowing what direction the wind is blowing. He’ll occasionally hear whispered snippets from the guards, before another who takes the job more seriously will shush his compatriot and the silence takes hold again. In these whispers, of such-and-such protest and this diplomat murdered or that family getting brought in by the Stasi, he remembers Gordan, can hear Gordan screaming his name as he was led away, feels a small flicker of hope like the warmth of a candle flame that maybe Gordan is safe and even fighting still, maybe even fighting to free him. He’ll forget again: forget his brother’s face, forget all else but his prison number and the four walls of his cell, but in the meantime, he feels a light in the gray sameness of his endless days.

The silence isn’t so bad, really. It’s the loneliness that gets to him. There are few prisoners in solitary at a time, and none who’ve spent so long as he has. His only constant company is guards who rarely look at, let alone speak to him. There’s a book sometimes, when he’s good; he’s read the bible so often he can quote whole passages from memory, in German and English, and sometimes a sympathetic guard- usually the one called Zalewski, but sometimes one of the younger, newer guards close to his age who are still full of optimism- will give him a pulp novel otherwise destined for the trash that he reads quickly before the inevitable contraband search and resulting confiscation and demerit. More often there are only the walls for him to look at and let his mind wander until one of the guards calls his number for meals or searches or lights out.

In the beginning he thought about pretty girls a lot, staring at the wall. He had only been seventeen when they arrested him for the bombing, more a boy than the man they claimed him to be at that sham of a trial. Girls and school had been his only interests, and with school having evaporated with his incarceration, he thought about girls in pretty clothes and girls in no clothes at all. But as time passed, with his memory of life on the outside growing fuzzier all the time, eventually his thoughts of girls evaporated. These days, he thought of fresh clean air, grass beneath his bare feet, and food on his tongue that wasn’t bland bread or tasteless grayish slop. Simple pleasures he had taken for granted before taking the fall for his brother.

He wondered if people thought him stupid, because surely no one truly believed that he had been the one behind the bombing. His future had been all but certain, his grades and connections (made only out of necessity and not any political affiliation) made university a natural decision. Gordan, however, had always been a troublemaker, only caring about school so far as how it was just another extension of indoctrination of the masses, and he associated with less than savory characters. To those who knew the twins, if you asked them, they wouldn’t hesitate to say Gordan had been behind the bombing. That had mattered little to the police, or the courts. Henry had fit the description of the boy with the bomb just as well, and his repeated confessions- first at the time of his arrest, then repeatedly over the course of a brutal interrogation and finally in that sham of a court- sealed his fate. He imagined people whispering about him, the boy who ruined his good future for the sake of his troublemaker brother, who probably didn’t even care and would continue as though nothing had happened.

Henry knew better, though. He knew Gordan better than anyone, knew this would be the thing to push his brother from a petty directionless criminal to someone capable of real change. Gordan wanted to change the system, and what better push could there be than a twin put away for his own crime? At least, from his cell, he hoped that was the case. Even if it wasn’t, Gordan was his brother- of course Henry would take the fall for him.

He knows he’s been in prison a long time, could probably pinpoint the year with some thought. He hasn’t seen the sun in ages except through the small windows set higher than he could ever reach and barred besides. He hasn’t seen much of the outdoors in almost as long. Sometimes in the beginning the guards would take him out into the exercise yard in chains and let him walk around for an hour or so a few times a week, but that was years ago and the sky was always grey, overcast and miserable, not a spot of sunshine to be found.

He hasn’t seen a mirror since they removed the one above his cell’s tiny sink-and-toilet combo. That was his fault, a stupid mistake in year three at the edge of despair when he tried to dislodge it by ramming his head against it repeatedly. He thinks he meant to kill himself with the broken shards, but he never got the chance before the guards flooded into his cell and threw him to the floor. That incident earned him a few crude facial stitches from the infirmary and a downgrade from solitary to the suicide watch cells, where all he had was a mattress on the floor, no sheets or pillow and the only light coming in was from the hallway because there were no light bulbs in the cells or even barred windows like in solitary, and that meant there was almost no light at all because the light was too weak to filter through the bars.

He screamed himself hoarse the first night in the suicide cells. It’s the last time he can remember calling out for help, for his mother, for Gordan. After that, he didn’t say a word, and eventually they took him back to solitary where his cell was the same except for the missing mirror. He hasn’t said a word since, either.

Henry sighs, resting his head against the wall, trying to angle his head so he can see the thin light of the sun from the windows. He hears a hiss from the doorway and looks up. It’s Zalewski. He has something in his hands.

“Got something for you,” Zalewski tells him.

If it were any other guard, Henry would stay on his bed, not move a muscle. Sometimes it’s a trick, with the others, even the newer friendly ones, to get him to move so they can beat him for an imagined infraction. Zalewski has never been like that, even when he was new. He’s as friendly as a prison guard could be; he’s given Henry books before, tries to get them back when Henry finishes, and looks guilty if they’re found during a search and Henry gets a beating for it. Zalewski tries chitchat if he’s the only guard on solitary or he’s paired with one of the more sympathetic guards, never beats Henry for his silence (even once joking it was the last form of protest he had, which did make Henry crack a smile for a fraction of a second), and all-around tries to make the prison experience a little less hellish. So when Zalewski offers him something, Henry generally at least makes a good faith attempt to hear him out. Henry rises from his bed and meets the guard at the bars.

“Now, you make sure to hide this real well,” Zalewski says, keeping his voice low. “They find this, they’ll _know_ a guard gave it to you, and they give a big shit about that. There’s no plausible deniability like with the books, right? Can’t blame another prisoner for this. So hide it well.”

Henry nods as Zalewski hands him an envelope through the bars and then walks back to his post like nothing happened. Sitting back on his bed, Henry turns the envelope over. There, staring him in the face is his own name written in the unmistakable handwriting of his brother.

It takes a few minutes for his hands to stop shaking enough for him to open the envelope.

 

_Henry,_

_If you’re reading this, I owe someone (perhaps many someones, but one particular someone above all else) a great deal of gratitude. I’ve been searching for you for almost eight years now, I was never even told that you were taken to prison. Henry, I thought they murdered you for what I had done! They might as well have for all I was told. It was only recently I knew for sure you were alive, and only shortly before I started writing this that I knew where you were. Henry, the prison you’re in doesn’t officially exist!_

_I promise I’ll get you out of there. There’s too much to go over here, but there are people working to help me, and helping to free you. You might be visited by a lawyer by the name of Mueller soon- you can trust him. He helped a woman I know out of a tough spot, and she’s looking to see if he’ll help you. With the way the tide is turning lately, it might be possible. Even without Mueller’s direct help, there are other options. The woman I mentioned said something about having Mueller’s contacts facilitate negotiations, which will probably mean money. Don’t worry about it-if I have to, there are places I can go._

_Henry, my brother, I love you and have never stopped missing you. I will get you out of there, I promise._

_Gordan_

He hides the letter under a loose tile in the floor, located under his bed and only visible from a certain angle that the guards never notice. After some time, when the letter still hasn’t been disturbed from its hiding place, Zalewski brings him a pen and paper and offers to “send a message down the chain.” Henry only nods and disappears in his cell long enough to write a short message.

 

_G,_

_Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up._

_H_

“You sure?” Zalewski asks when Henry returns quickly.

Henry nods, and Zalewski, for his part, lets Henry have his privacy by putting the message in an envelope without looking. There’s nothing there that would get the guard in trouble anyway, but the fact the other man doesn’t seem to care about that and cares more about the message getting to its intended recipient unread almost makes Henry believe in the good of the world the way he did before all this. The men separate, Zalewski to his duties and Henry to the walls of his cell, where he dreams of green grass and sunshine and fresh air.


End file.
